The Handmaid’s Tale

II Shopping
2
A chair, a table, a lamp. Above, on the white ceiling, a relief ornament in the
shape of a wreath, and in the center of it a blank space, plastered over, like the
place in a face where the eye has been taken out. There must have been a
chandelier, once. They've removed anything you could tie a rope to.
A window, two white curtains. Under the window, a window seat with a little
cushion. When the window is partly open-it only opens partly-the air can come
in and make the curtains move. I can sit in the chair, or on the window seat,
hands folded, and watch this. Sunlight comes in through the window too, ami
falls on the floor, which is made of wood, in narrow strips, highly polished. I can
smell the polish. There's a rug on the floor, oval, of braided rags. This is the kind
of touch they like: folk art, archaic, made by women, in their spare time, from
things that have no further use. A return to traditional values. Waste not want
not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?
On the wall above the chair, a picture, framed but with no glass: a print of
flowers, blue irises, watercolor. Flowers are still allowed, Does each of us have
the same print, the same chair, the same while curtains, I wonder? Government
issue?
Think of it as being in the army, said Aunt Lydia.
A bed. Single, mattress medium-hard, covered with a flocked white spread.
Nothing takes place in the bed but sleep; or no sleep. I try not to think too much.
Like other things now, thought must be rationed. There's a lot that doesn't bear
thinking about. Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to last. I know why
there is no glass, in front of the watercolor picture of blue irises, and why the

---

window opens only partly and why the glass in it is shatterproof. It isn't running
away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you
can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.
So. Apart from these details, this could be a college guest room, for the less
distinguished visitors; or a room in a rooming house, of former times, for ladies
in reduced circumstances. That is what we are now. The circumstances have
been reduced; for those of us who still have circumstances.
But a chair, sunlight, flowers: these are not to be dismissed. I am alive, I live, I
breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight. Where I am is not a
prison but a privilege, as Aunt Lydia said, who was in love with either/or.
The bell that measures time is ringing. Time here is measured by bells, as once
in nunneries. As in a nunnery too, there are few mirrors.
I get up out of the chair, advance my feet into the sunlight, in their red shoes,
flat-heeled to save the spine and not for dancing. The red gloves are lying on the
bed. I pick them up, pull them onto my hands, finger by finger. Everything
except the wings around my face is red: the color of blood, which defines us.
The skirt is ankle-length, full, gathered to a flat yoke that extends over the
breasts, the sleeves are full. The white wings too are prescribed issue; they are to
keep us from seeing, but also from being seen. I never looked good in red, it's
not my color. I pick up the shopping basket, put it over my arm.
The door of the room-not my room, I refuse to say my-is not locked. In fact it
doesn't shut properly. I go out into the polished hallway, which has a runner
down the center, dusty pink. Like a path through the forest, like a carpet for
royalty, it shows me the way.
The carpet bends and goes down the front staircase and I go with it, one hand on
the banister, once a tree, turned in another century, rubbed to a warm gloss. Late
Victorian, the house is, a family
house, built for a large rich family. There's a grandfather clock in the hallway,
which doles out time, and then the door to the motherly front sitting room, with
its flesh tones and hints. A sitting room in which I never sit, but stand or kneel
only. At the end of the hallway, above the front door, is a fanlight of colored
glass: flowers, red and blue.

---

There remains a mirror, on the hall wall. If I turn my head so that the white
wings framing my face direct my vision towards it, I can see it as I go down the
stairs, round, convex, a pier glass, like the eye of a fish, and myself in it like a
distorted shadow, a parody of something, some fairy-tale figure in a red cloak,
descending towards a moment of carelessness that is the same as danger. A
Sister, dipped in blood.
At the bottom of the stairs there's a hat-and-umbrella stand, the bentwood kind,
long rounded rungs of wood curving gently up into hooks shaped like the
opening fronds of a fern. There are several umbrellas in it: black, for the
Commander, blue, for the Commander's Wife, and the one assigned to me, which
is red. I leave the red umbrella where it is, because I know from the window that
the day is sunny. I wonder whether or not the Commander's Wile-is in the sitting
room. She doesn't always sit. Sometimes I can hear her pacing back and forth, a
heavy step and then a light one, anil the soft tap of her cane on the dusty-rose
carpet.
I walk along the hallway, past the sitting room door and the door that leads into
the dining room, and open the door at the end of the hall and go through into the
kitchen. Here the smell is no longer of furniture polish. Rita is in here, standing
at the kitchen table, which has a top of chipped white enamel. She's in her usual
Martha's dress, which is dull green, like a surgeon's gown of the time before. The
dress is much like mine in shape, long and concealing, but with a bib apron over
it and without the white wings and the veil. She puts on the veil to go outside,
but nobody much cares who sees the face of a Martha. Her sleeves are rolled in
the elbow, showing her brown arms. She's making bread, thowing the loaves for
the final brief kneading and then the shaping.
Rita sees me and nods, whether in greeting or in simple acknowl edgment of my
presence it's hard to say, and wipes her floury hands on her apron and rummages
in the kitchen drawer for the token book. Frowning, she tears out three tokens
and hands them to me. Her face might be kindly if she would smile. But the
frown isn't personal: it's the red dress she disapproves of, and what it stands for.
She thinks I may be catching, like a disease or any form of bad luck.
Sometimes I listen outside closed doors, a thing I never would have done in the
time before. I don't listen long, because I don't want to be caught doing it. Once,
though, I heard Rita say to Cora I hat she wouldn't debase herself like that.

---

Nobody asking you, Cora said. Anyways, what could you do, supposing?
Go to the Colonies, Rita said. They have the choice.
With the Unwomen, and starve to death and Lord knows what all? said Cora.
Catch you.
They were shelling peas; even through the almost-closed door I could hear the
light clink of the hard peas falling into the metal howl. I heard Rita, a grunt or a
sigh, of protest or agreement.
Anyways, they're doing it for us all, said Cora, or so they say. If I hadn't of got
my tubes tied, it could of been me, say I was ten years younger. It's not that bad.
It's not what you'd call hard work.
Better her than me, Rita said, and I opened the door. Their faces were the way
women's faces are when they've been talking about you behind your back and
they think you've heard: embarrassed, but also a little defiant, as if it were their
right. That day, Cora was more pleasant to me than usual, Rita more surly.
Today, despite Rita's closed face and pressed lips, I would like to stay here, in
the kitchen. Cora might come in, from somewhere else in the house, carrying her
bottle of lemon oil and her duster, and
Rita would make coffee-in the houses of the Commanders there is still real
coffee-and we would sit at Rita's kitchen table, which is not Rita's any more than
my table is mine, and we would talk, about aches and pains, illnesses, our feet,
our backs, all the different kinds of mischief that our bodies, like unruly
children, can get into. We would nod our heads as punctuation to each other's
voices, signaling that yes, we know all about it. We would exchange remedies
and try to outdo each other in the recital of our physical miseries; gently we
would complain, our voices soft and minor key and mournful as pigeons in the
eaves troughs. / know what you mean, we'd say. Or, a quaint expression you
sometimes hear, still, from older people: / hear where you're coming from, as if
the voice itself were a traveler, arriving from a distant place. Which it would be,
which it is.
How I used to despise such talk. Now I long for it. At least it was talk. An
exchange, of sorts.

---

Or we would gossip. The Marthas know things, they talk among themselves,
passing the unofficial news from house to house. Like me, they listen at doors,
no doubt, and see things even with their eyes averted. I've heard them at it
sometimes, caught whiffs of their private conversations.
Stillborn, it was. Or, Stabbed her with a knitting needle, right in the belly.
Jealousy, it must have been, eating her up. Or, tantalizingly, It was toilet cleaner
she used. Worked like a charm, though you'd think he'd of tasted it. Must've been
that drunk; but they found her out all right.
Or I would help Rita make the bread, sinking my hands into that soft resistant
warmth which is so much like flesh. I hunger to touch something, other than
cloth or wood. I hunger to commit the act of touch.
But even if I were to ask, even if I were to violate decorum to that extent, Rita
would not allow it. She would he too alrüid. T Marthas are not supposed to
fraternize with us.
Fraternize means to behave like a brother. Luke told me that. He said there was
no corresponding word thathat meant to behave like a sister. Sororize, it would
have to be, he said. From the Latin. He liked knowing about such details. The
derivations of words, curious usages. I used to tease him about being pedantic,
I take the tokens from Rita's outstretched hand. They have pictures on them, of
the things they can be exchanged for tweleve eggs, a piece of cheese, a brown
thing that's supposed to be a steak. I place them in the zippered pocket in my
sleeve, where I keep my pass.
"Tell them fresh, for the eggs," she any. "Not like the last time. And a chicken,
tell them, not a hen. Tell them who It's for and then they won't mess around."
"All right," I say. I don't smile. Why tempt her to friendship?
3
I go out by the back door, into the garden, which is large and tidy: a lawn in the
middle, a willow, weeping catkins; around the edges, the flower borders, in
which the daffodils are now fading and the tulips are opening their cups, spilling
out color. The tulips are red, a darker crimson towards the stem, as if they have
been cut and are beginning to heal there.

---

This garden is the domain of the Commander's Wife. Looking out through my
shatterproof window I've often seen her in it, her knees on a cushion, a light blue
veil thrown over her wide gardening hat, a basket at her side with shears in it and
pieces of string for lying the flowers into place. A Guardian detailed to the
Commander does the heavy digging; the Commander's Wife directs, pointing
with her stick. Many of the Wives have such gardens, it's something for them to
order and maintain and care for.
I once had a garden. I can remember the smell of the turned earth, the plump
shapes of bulbs held in the hands, fullness, the dry rustle of seeds through the
fingers. Time could pass more swiftly thai way. Sometimes the Commander's
Wife has a chair brought out, and just sits in it, in her garden. From a distance it
looks like peace.
She isn't here now, and I start to wonder where she is: I don't like to come upon
the Commander's Wife unexpectedly. Perhaps she's sewing, in the sitting room,
with her left foot on the footstool, because of her arthritis. Or knitting scarves,
for the Angels at the front lines. I can hardly believe the Angels have a need for
such scarves; anyway, the ones made by the Commander's Wife are too
elaborate. She doesn't bother with the cross-and-star pattern used by many of the
other Wives, it's not a challenge. Fir trees march across the ends of her scarves,
or eagles, or stiff humanoid figures, boy and girl, boy and girl. They aren't
scarves for grown men but for children.
Sometimes I think these scarves aren't sent to the Angels at all, but unraveled
and turned back into balls of yarn, to be knitted again in their turn. Maybe it's
just something to keep the Wives busy, to give them a sense of purpose. But I
envy the Commander's Wife her knitting. It's good to have small goals that can
be easily attained.
What does she envy me?
She doesn't speak to me, unless she can't avoid it. I am a reproach to her; and a
necessity.
We stood face to face for the first time five weeks ago, when I arrived at this
posting. The Guardian from the previous posüng brought me to the front door.
On first days we are permitted front doors, but after that we're supposed to use
the back. Things haven't settled down, it's too soon, everyone is unsure about our

---

exact status. After a while it will be either all from doors or all back.
Aunt Lydia said she was lobbying for the front. Your in a position of honor, she
said.
The Guardian rang the doorbell for me, but before there was time for someone to
hear and walk quickly to answer, the door opened inward. She must have been
waiting behind it, I was expecting a Martha, but it was her instead, in her long
powder-blue robe, unmistakable.
So, you're the new one, she said. She didn't step aside to let me in, she just stood
there in the doorway, blocking the entrance. She wanted me to feel that I could
not come into the house unless she said so. There is push and shove, these days,
over such toeholds.
Yes, I said.
Leave it on the porch. She said this to the Guardian, who was carrying my bag.
The bag was red vinyl and not large. There was another bag, with the winter
cloak and heavier dresses, but that would be coming later.
The Guardian set down the bag and saluted her. Then I could hear his footsteps
behind me, going back down the walk, and the click of the front gate, and I felt
as if a protective arm were being withdrawn. The threshold of a new house is a
lonely place.
She waited until the car started up and pulled away. I wasn't looking at her face,
but at the part of her I could see with my head lowered: her blue waist,
thickened, her left hand on the ivory head of her cane, the large diamonds on the
ring finger, which must once have been fine and was still finely kept, the
fingernail at the end of the knuckly finger filed to a gentle curving point. It was
like an ironic smile, on that finger; like something mocking her.
You might as well come in, she said. She turned her back on me and limped
down the hall. Shut the door behind you.
I lifted my red bag inside, as she'd no doubt intended, then closed the door. I
didn't say anything to her. Aunt Lydia said it was best not to speak unless they
asked you a direct question. Try to think of it from their point of view, she said,
her hands clasped and wrung together, her nervous pleading smile. It isn't easy

---

for them.
In here, said the Commander's Wife. When I went into the sitting room she was
already in her chair, her left foot on the footstool, with its petit point cushion,
roses in a basket. Her knitting was on the floor beside the chair, the needles stuck
through it.
I stood in front of her, hands folded. So, she said. She had a cigarette, and she
put it between her lips and gripped it there while she lit it. Her lips were thin,
held that way, with the small vertical lines around them you used to see in
advertisements for lip cosmetics. The lighter was ivory-colored.
The cigarettes must have come from the black market, I thought, and this gave
me hope. Even now that there is no real money anymore, there's still a black
market. There's always a black market, there's always something that can be
exchanged. She then was a woman who might bend the rules. But what did I
have, to trade?
I looked at the cigarette with longing. For me, like liquor and coffee, they are
forbidden.
So old what's-his-face didn't work out, she said.
No, ma'am, I said.
She gave what might have been a laugh, then coughed. Tough luck on him, she
said. This is your second, isn't it?
Third, ma'am, I said.
Not so good for you either, she said. There was another coughing laugh. You can
sit down. I don't make a practice of it, but just this time.
I did sit, on the edge of one of the stiff-backed chairs. I didn't want to stare
around the room, I didn't want to appear inattentive to her; so the marble
mantelpiece to my right and the mirror over it and the bunches of flowers were
just shadows, then, at the edges of my eyes. Later I would have more than
enough time to take them in.
Now her face was on a level with mine. I thought I recognized her; or at least

---

there was something familiar about her. A little of her hair was showing, from
under her veil. It was still blond.
I thought then that maybe she bleached it, that hair dye was something else she
could get through the black market, but I know now that it really is blond. Her
eyebrows were plucked into thin arched lines, which gave her a permanent look
of surprise, or outrage, or inquisitiveness, such as you might see on a startled
child, but below them her eyelids were tired-looking. Not so her eyes, which
were the flat hostile blue of a midsummer sky in bright sunlight, a blue that shuts
you out. Her nose must once have been what was called cute but now was too
small for her face. Her face was not fat but it was large. Two lines led downward
from the corners of her mouth; between them was her chin,
clenched like a fist.
I want to see as little of you as possible, she said. I expect you feel the same way
about me.
I didn't answer, as a yes would have been insulting, a no contradictory.
I know you aren't stupid, she went on. She inhaled, blew out the smoke. I've read
your file. As far as I'm concerned, this is like a business transaction. But if I get
trouble, I'll give trouble back. You understand?
Yes, ma'am, I said.
Don't call me ma'am, she said irritably. You're not a Martha.
I didn't ask what I was supposed to cull her, because I could see that she hoped I
would never have the- occasion to call her anvthing at all. I was disappointed. I
wanted, then, to turn her into an older sister, a motherly figure, someone who
would understand and protect me. The Wife in my posting before this had spent
most of her time in her bedroom; the Marthas said she drank. I wanted this one
to be different. I wanted to think I would have liked her, in another time and
place, another life. But I could see already that I wouldn't have liked her, nor she
me.
She put her cigarette out, half smoked, in a little scrolled ashtray on the lamp
table beside her.

---

She did this decisively, one jab and one grind, not the series of genteel taps
favored by many of the Wives.
As for my husband, she said, he's just that. My husband. I want that to be
perfectly clear. Till death do us part. It's final.
Yes, ma'am, I said again, forgetting. They used to have dolls, for little girls, that
would talk if you pulled a string at the back; I thought I was sounding like that,
voice of a monotone, voice of a doll. She probably longed to slap my face. They
can hit us, there's Scriptural precedent. But not with any implement. Only with
their hands.
It's one of the things we fought for, said the Commander's Wife, and suddenly
she wasn't looking at me, she was looking down at her knuckled, diamond-
studded hands, and I knew where I'd seen her before.
The first time was on television, when I was eight or nine. It was when my
mother was sleeping in, on Sunday mornings, and I would get up early and go to
the television set in my mother's study and flip through the channels, looking for
cartoons. Sometimes when I couldn't find any I would watch the Growing Souls
Gospel Hour, where they would tell Bible stories for children and sing hymns.
One of the women was called Serena Joy. She was the lead so-prano. She was
ash blond, petite, with a snub nose and huge blue eyes which she'd turn upwards
during hymns. She could smile and cry at the same time, one tear or two sliding
gracefully down her cheek, as if on cue, as her voice lifted through its highest
notes, tremulous, effortless. It was after that she went on to other things.
The woman sitting in front of me was Serena Joy. Or had been, once. So it was
worse than I thought.
4
I walk along the gravel path that divides the back lawn, neatly, like a hair